Saving lives by tackling malaria
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CORDIScovery podcast- Episode #43 - Saving lives by tackling malaria
This is an AI transcription.
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:39:14
Abigail Acton
This is CORDISdiscovery. Hello and welcome to this episode of CORDIScovery with me, Abigail Acton. Today we're talking about malaria from controlling mosquitoes, carrying the parasite through the way malaria behaves in the body. The range of challenges facing researchers is very diverse. The UN's third sustainable development goal is to by 2030 end the epidemics of Aids, tuberculosis and malaria.
00:00:39:16 - 00:01:06:21
Abigail Acton
The EU is helping to achieve this ambitious goal by funding research into the disease to get a better understanding of how the parasite evolves in the body. Working out why vaccines for some types of malaria remain ineffective, and how to reduce the number of infected mosquitoes in the first place. Controlling the number of infected mosquitoes, known as vectors, is still largely based on insecticide spraying, indoor spraying, and mosquito nets infused with insecticides do have a positive impact.
00:01:06:23 - 00:01:36:23
Abigail Acton
But the World Health Organization warns that fragile gains may be lost due to insecticide resistance amongst Anopheles mosquitoes. They call for innovation to develop new tools, technologies and approaches for vector control. Along with the difficulty of vector control, once someone is infected, the parasite Plasmodium falciparum behaves unusually within the body. It has multiple life cycle stages, and a feature of one stage may change in another.
00:01:37:00 - 00:02:02:00
Abigail Acton
When it comes to trying to develop a vaccine, the situation is also complex. Placental malaria infected close to 13 million African women in 2022. The basic problem of placental malaria is that the molecule that the parasites used to bind in the placenta is highly variable. So an antibody recognizing one variant often doesn't bind to others, making vaccines frustratingly difficult to develop.
00:02:02:02 - 00:02:29:03
Abigail Acton
Working in each of these fields with support from the EU research funding. Today's guests are here to tell us what their work is doing to shine a light on these and other issues. Catherine Merrick is professor of parasitology in the pathology department at Cambridge University. She studies the human malaria parasite aiming to improve our understanding of the fundamental biology of the parasite and the impact of this biology on virulence.
00:02:29:04 - 00:02:30:00
Abigail Acton
Welcome, Catherine.
00:02:30:00 - 00:02:32:05
Catherine Merrick
Hello. It’s lovely to be here.
00:02:32:05 - 00:02:50:11
Abigail Acton
Lovely to have you. Lars Hviid is professor in the Department of Immunology and Microbiology at the University of Copenhagen. He's particularly interested in improving our understanding of how people gradually acquire protection from malaria, thereby helping the development of vaccines against this deadly disease. Hello, Lars.
00:02:50:13 - 00:02:52:15
Lars Hviid
Hello. Fantastic to be here. Thank you.
00:02:52:19 - 00:03:08:09
Abigail Acton
You're welcome. Hanan Lepek is the founder and CEO of Senecio Robotics. He works at the interface of biology and mechanical and software engineering to create and deploy sterile mosquitoes on a large scale to reduce local mosquito populations. Hello, Hanan.
00:03:08:11 - 00:03:09:24
Hanan Lepek
Hi. Great being here. Thank you.
00:03:10:05 - 00:03:36:15
Abigail Acton
Welcome. Catherine, I'm going to turn to you first. The PlasmoCycle Project set out to transform our understanding of the basic biology of the malaria parasite Plasmodium, and how that biology affects virulence. So can you tell us what is unusual about the malaria plasmodium parasite? Please, Catherine.
00:03:36:17 - 00:03:59:22
Catherine Merrick
The malaria parasites really are unusual. They are single celled organisms, and their closest ancestors are actually tiny cells, a bit like algae that live in coral reefs.. So they're really very different from our own human cells. And one of the ways in which they are different is that their cell cycle, the way they make new cells, is fundamentally unusual. Most of the cells that we've studied for decades, like yeasts and human cancer cells, have basically similar biology. They divide by what we call binary fission.
00:03:59:22 - 00:04:33:04
Catherine Merrick
So they copy their genome, split it into two halves to get two genomes, and then they split the whole cell in half to get two daughter cells. We really know a lot about those stages, the order they are happening, the proteins that control them. But malaria parasites just don't do this. They make multiple daughter cells 20 or more inside the same mother cell before dividing up and bursting out all together. So most of what we know about the ordering and the control of those basic processes just can’t be mapped onto these parasites.
00:04:33:06 - 00:04:51:06
Abigail Acton
And what did your project establish and how did you go about establishing that? Tell us a little bit more about the work, the project.
00:04:51:08 - 00:05:26:09
Catherine Merrick
So the first thing to say is that, we, took out this project because I had developed some new technology that would help us to study the malaria parasites cell cycle. And the first innovation there was adding a gene to the parasites called thymidine kinase. This allowed us to label new DNA being made in the parasite as the genome got copied. Now, in itself, that wasn't novel. People had been doing experiments like that in human cells for years, but they just didn't work in malaria parasites. So the eureka moment here was figuring out that they didn't work simply because this one gene, thymidine kinase was missing, and that adding it back would allow us to do all these experiments looking at how and when the genome got copied.
00:05:26:11 - 00:05:45:14
Catherine Merrick
Not in binary fashion, like in human cells, but in this complex, syncytial cell division process in malaria parasites.
00:05:45:16 - 00:06:05:09
Abigail Acton
So it’s almost I mean, if I could say this, correct me if I’m wrong, but it’s a little bit like, analogous to the notion of a dye where you can actually visualize something that’s going on. And previously you couldn’t. I mean, often, you know, like if you think about dyes being used to follow mechanisms, biological mechanisms, in this case, it was a gene that you were using to amplify and show you what was going on. Is that is that more or less correct?
00:06:05:11 - 00:06:30:22
Catherine Merrick
That’s right. So that we were exactly using a dye basically. But because the parasites didn’t have this gene, they ignored the dye. And if we put the gene in now, they can see the dye and we can label them with it. So we use that just labeling the new DNA that was made on whole populations of parasites, on single parasite cells, and even on single DNA molecules in those cells to follow the basic parameters of the cell cycle. So, for example, we asked things like how long does it take to do each new genome?
00:06:30:24 - 00:06:50:03
Catherine Merrick
How many can be replicating in a parasite at once? Because remember, a human cell is only ever doing one at a time, but a parasite can be doing a dozen at once. We even asked, how fast is a single DNA molecule get replicated? And they sound like basic questions, but they allowed us to make meaningful comparisons with future questions.
00:06:50:08 - 00:07:18:16
Catherine Merrick
Like, if we treat the parasites with an anti-malarial drug, do they stop making new genomes? Or if we starve them of nutrients, do they slow down? And those questions matter because they can matter for real malarial disease. Human patients can get very low on sugar, for example, and that might mess with the cell division in the parasites. Or they can take an anti-malarial drug. And we know that some of those drugs can damage DNA. So does the copying of the DNA get messed up as a result?
00:07:18:18 - 00:07:32:22
Abigail Acton
I think this is wonderful, but it's absolutely the mechanics. And of course you have to establish those if you're going to work out solutions. So yes, indeed. And talking about solutions, how do you feel that your work is actually going to feed into future research going forward?
00:07:32:24 - 00:08:00:01
Catherine Merrick
Well, we are a long way of generating, new interventions for malaria with this work. But the more we understand about how these parasites do cell division, the smarter we can be about designing new innovations in interventions. So, for example, to make a bad cell die, which is what we're trying to do in chemotherapy for cancer, for example, with antiviral drugs, we often try to hit what are called cell cycle checkpoints.
00:08:00:07 - 00:08:23:06
Catherine Merrick
The way that the cell cycle is controlled. And if we can come up with combinations of antimalarial drugs, which both damage the parasite's DNA and simultaneously knacker their checkpoints, that could be a more effective therapy to make the bad malaria parasites die. And that obviously could be really impactful.
00:08:23:08 - 00:08:30:16
Abigail Acton
Yeah, that sounds fantastic. Absolutely super. And really well explained. Thank you so much. That was very, very clear for everyone. Thank you. Does anyone have any comments or observations to make about Catherine's work? Yes, Lars.
00:08:30:18 - 00:08:54:09
Lars Hviid
Yeah. Well, I have one question. I mean, as I understand it, Catherine is now discussing how the asexual parasites divide inside the red blood cells. But before that stage, there is the liver stage, where one parasite actually divides, not into 20 something daughter parasites, but tens of thousands of daughter parasites. Does a similar process apply in that stage?
00:08:54:09 - 00:08:55:10
Lars Hviid
Do you know that?
00:08:55:12 - 00:09:16:09
Catherine Merrick
It does, absolutely. And actually, some of my colleagues in Portugal are studying exactly that, and they're using the same technology that we developed, adding this thymidine kinase gene into the parasites. In a mouse malaria model where you can look at that liver stage. So we can't look at a human liver very easily, but we can look at a mouse liver.
00:09:16:11 - 00:09:37:18
Catherine Merrick
And indeed, in those liver stages, thousands of new parasites are made, within a single mother cell, first asynchronously. And then really interestingly, at the end, they seem to do a massive synchronous cell division. And there are then tens of thousands of daughter parasites.
00:09:37:20 - 00:09:57:11
Abigail Acton
Oh, fascinating. Like a great big sort of burst of them. Oh, horrible. Right. Well, I'm so glad you guys are doing this research. Lars, I'm going to turn to you now. You coordinated the PAMSEQ project, and the work you and your team have done is bringing a vaccine for placental malaria, potentially closer. Now, I know you're hoping to build on the work you've done so far because you feel a vaccine might be within reach.
00:09:57:13 - 00:10:01:16
Abigail Acton
Can you tell us a little bit about what drew you into this area of research, Lars?
00:10:01:18 - 00:10:30:10
Lars Hviid
Well, malaria and pregnant women, what we call placental malaria is fascinating. I mean, because it constitutes a really remarkable exception to the general rule that malaria is a childhood disease in Africa where it occurs. So adults are generally protected because they have developed immunity to the disease. The childhood malaria vaccines that are now being rolled out in Africa aims to accelerate that process.
00:10:30:12 - 00:11:12:09
Lars Hviid
But despite this immunity, women once again become highly susceptible to malaria when they become pregnant without getting too technical, this is because the placenta creates a new opportunity for the parasites, where they can hide and thrive. They selectively multiply there and cause inflammation, which causes placental malaria and delivery of pre-term and very small babies. Remarkably, this problem goes away over successive pregnancies, which clearly suggests that there is some kind of acquisition of immunity and that this acquisition that occurs in childhood is somehow reset by pregnancy and then replayed.
00:11:12:14 - 00:11:13:20
Lars Hviid
And I find that fascinating.
00:11:14:00 - 00:11:33:13
Abigail Acton
That is fascinating. That seems very strange. Inconsistency. There must be a reason for it. Fascinating. So can you tell me a little bit more about what you think the reason might be? And in fact, actually, could you could you tell us a little bit more about the, the parasite molecule and what makes that, difficult to deal with via vaccination?
00:11:33:15 - 00:11:59:17
Lars Hviid
Absolutely. I mean, only about 20 years ago, it became clear, actually, that the malaria parasite, and I'm talking like about falciparum that we're discussing here, that that parasite uses a special molecule to hide in the placenta. And once the immune system sees that molecule, it starts making an immune response to it. It produces antibodies that can prevent the parasites from sticking in the placenta.
00:11:59:19 - 00:12:28:08
Lars Hviid
So the next time the woman gets pregnant, those antibodies are there for her. And the problem of placental malaria is no longer her problem. The molecule that the parasites utilize, we call it VAR2CSA is of no use to parasites, if there is no placenta to hide in. Women, therefore, do not start to make antibodies to this molecule until VAR2CSA positive parasites appear during pregnancy.
00:12:28:10 - 00:12:40:15
Lars Hviid
And once the woman has acquired these antibodies, she is protected. So placental malaria is therefore mainly a problem during the first few pregnancies because afterwards she has acquired immunity.
00:12:40:17 - 00:12:47:11
Abigail Acton
And if we know what the antibody is, how come we can't harness the power of a vaccine to boost immunity in the first place?
00:12:47:14 - 00:13:11:09
Lars Hviid
The discovery of the VAR2CSA molecules spawned the idea that it should be possible to make a vaccine specifically to give to young women prior to their first pregnancy, and then the aim to protect them against placental malaria. VAR2CSA vaccines have been tried, and they should work, but they haven't really given very encouraging results. VAR2CSA is a tricky molecule.
00:13:11:11 - 00:13:36:12
Lars Hviid
I mean, even though every parasite has at least one, they are not completely identical between different parasites. But to be useful in a vaccine, the vaccine needs to target the exact parts of such a molecule that is conserved among all the variants. And this was not achieved in the vaccines that have been tested. And therefore they could only protect against those variants that were used in the vaccine.
00:13:36:15 - 00:13:49:18
Abigail Acton
So it's a question of looking for a common denominator. Yes. It could be targeted by a vaccine. Exactly okay I see. So what did the project set out to do and how? Tell us a little bit about the technology that you were using, because I do understand that drove really back the frontiers.
00:13:49:20 - 00:14:18:24
Lars Hviid
Yes. I mean, we were struck actually when with this, result of the vaccination, which disappointed us as much as anybody really. Was that, in contrast to this marked variant specificity, the antibodies that women acquire in response to placental malaria, they seem to be quite cross-reactive. And it is actually this discrepancy between the variant specificity after vaccination and the apparent cross-reactivity after exposure.
00:14:19:05 - 00:14:20:08
Abigail Acton
Cross-reactivity?
00:14:20:10 - 00:14:27:14
Lars Hviid
Cross-Reactivity meaning that the antibody can recognize many different variants of this VAR2CSA molecule okay.
00:14:27:15 - 00:14:28:15
Abigail Acton
But after exposure.
00:14:28:15 - 00:14:55:23
Lars Hviid
So we wanted to set out to find out why that was, the evidence that is cross-reactive after natural exposure was quite flimsy, actually. We only had a handful of antibodies that we could use to show that, but, those were antibodies that we discovered some 20 years ago. But, Pilar Quintana, who is a very smart scientist working with me, she proposed that we should use a new technology that was called LIBRA-seq.
00:14:56:00 - 00:15:11:16
Lars Hviid
To dramatically crank up the number of antibodies that we could study. So what Pilar did was that she went to the lab in the US that had developed this technology, and she applied it, but using different variants of our VAR2CSA molecule.
00:15:11:19 - 00:15:13:12
Abigail Acton
Right. And what did you find?
00:15:13:14 - 00:15:40:16
Lars Hviid
Well, she managed, during her period over there to identify about a thousand new antibodies. I mean, which was quite a leap from the initial handful that we had. And even better, those antibodies were most of them were quite cross-reactive. So the tentative conclusion that we made many years ago, that was based on a handful of antibodies since we hold true now that we have tested it with many, many more.
00:15:40:19 - 00:15:59:04
Abigail Acton
Oh that's wonderful. That's really, really excellent. And Lars, I know that the work you've been doing is, is really fundamental and as you say, really broadening our ability to, to analyze very many more of these antibodies. What are you hoping to be able to achieve in your next stage of research if you get the funding?
00:15:59:06 - 00:16:23:08
Lars Hviid
Yeah. Well, we need to find out exactly why it is that those antibodies that are naturally acquired are cross-reactive, whereas the vaccine induced antibodies are not. We actually think we know why that is, but we of course need to be sure. So if you consider the VAR2CSA molecule as, piece of string or piece of rope, when you do a vaccine, you in practice, you take a short piece of that string and you immunize with that.
00:16:23:13 - 00:16:45:01
Lars Hviid
So the antibodies you generate can only recognize something on that little piece. But in reality, this molecule is not a straight piece of string. It is folded up like a knot. So what we think is that the important things recognized by antibodies are composed of little bits on the string, that when the string is straight, they are far apart from each other.
00:16:45:05 - 00:17:05:07
Lars Hviid
But as you knotted up, then they will come close together. So when you use a vaccine, you break these things that are recognized by the important antibodies and therefore the vaccine is not cross-reactive. We are now testing this. I mean, if it's correct, we then need to find out how can we make the molecule look more not like.
00:17:05:07 - 00:17:11:17
Lars Hviid
But we hope that this work will somehow, make the problem of malaria and placental malaria go away.
00:17:11:19 - 00:17:28:14
Abigail Acton
Because that would be just obviously amazingly important. And the work you're doing is so groundbreaking. So I really hope that, that you can build on it and continue to build on it because I think it's clearly, you know, forging a way towards a vaccine to this horrible condition. So thank you very much, Lars.
00:17:28:19 - 00:17:32:12
Abigail Acton
Do we have any questions for Lars? Hanan? Yes. I think you have.
00:17:32:14 - 00:17:35:10
Hanan Lepek
A very naive question, if I may.
00:17:35:10 - 00:17:38:18
Abigail Acton
I love those, I love those are excellent. It means that I don't have to ask them.
00:17:38:19 - 00:17:41:10
Lars Hviid
I fear those.
00:17:41:12 - 00:18:05:02
Hanan Lepek
So it's amazing that you said that, subsequent pregnancies of women, they have lower chances of contracting malaria. Right? Isn't it a chance, somehow to maybe trick the parasite and let them think that, like, she will take a pill or something that her body is now pregnant when it's not, and then by that, lowering the chance it will contract the malaria.
00:18:05:04 - 00:18:27:13
Lars Hviid
Well, that's a good question. I think actually the parasites. You don't need to try to trick the parasites, because I think that the parasites are always trying to figure out whether their host is pregnant. So they are continuously trying to express this VAR2CSA molecule. But if they happen to be in a non-pregnant individual, it could be a non-pregnant woman, it could be a child, it could be a man.
00:18:27:14 - 00:18:37:03
Lars Hviid
Those parasites will die and therefore you don't make an immune response to it. So people like you and me will never make antibodies to that, even if we get malaria.
00:18:37:05 - 00:18:57:00
Abigail Acton
Yup. Okay, super. Thanks very much, Lars. And I really hope that your work, can continue. It's a very, very significant work. Hanan, I'm going to turn to you. We've been looking at the biology. We've been looking at the notion of identifying and perhaps finding a solution. But if we go right back down to basics, what we really need to do is control the number of mosquitoes.
00:18:57:02 - 00:19:19:07
Abigail Acton
So the RoboSIT project has used AI and other tools to successfully breed, which isn't easy and disperse - also not easy - sterile male mosquitoes as a way to control vector populations. So can you tell us a little bit more about the current ways, Hanan now, prior to your innovation, what are the ways that are currently used to control numbers of mosquitoes, please?
00:19:19:09 - 00:19:42:05
Hanan Lepek
Sure. So typically, specifically also in Africa, there was, a huge campaign in providing bed nets which do the great effective work, you know, pesticides. So that's great for that used to be great for adults. So thing is that once the fogging, typically was the fogging is it was not in the evaporates.
00:19:42:07 - 00:20:05:01
Hanan Lepek
Then you're still left with all the eggs and the larvae and the pupa, which are still currently developing. Other than the fact that it's very light, it's typically unhealthy. And also on top of that, the pesticide, new to develop the resistance to pesticides and creating new materials is a very, tedious and long regulatory process.
00:20:05:03 - 00:20:27:11
Hanan Lepek
And so the success of the sterile fruit flies program. So, for example, in Guatemala, where one of the largest SIT - sterile insect technique - facilities the world, resides, they produce about a billion of sterile fruit flies, every week or so. I believe this is like the gold standard for mosquito control, specifically for the Anopheles, for the malaria.
00:20:27:13 - 00:20:51:20
Lars Hviid
Mosquito. There are huge challenges in the ability to separate the females from the males. It's typically much, much easier at the adult stage. So we want to separate the males from the females. And we can do that often in the adult stage. The mosquitoes are very fragile. And we want to, rear medians of them and then release them into nature streets wherever.
00:20:51:22 - 00:20:57:24
Abigail Acton
Right. Okay. So that's the target. That's the ideal. What is RoboSIT doing?
00:20:58:01 - 00:21:23:11
Hanan Lepek
We took this concept and identified why it was not used so far on global scale. You need a lot of working hands. You need a lot of people in order to rear the mosquitoes. You want to release males only because, the females bite. And then there's the males, being released. They target the females, they mate.
00:21:23:13 - 00:21:49:12
Hanan Lepek
There is no baby mosquito. And as the female mosquito typically mates only once in a lifetime one when releasing, once a week, then the population drops within x number of weeks or months, depending on the infestation level. So you need a lot of people, and you need to be repetitive. So what we did is we are harnessing AI and automation.
00:21:49:14 - 00:22:14:20
Hanan Lepek
When you're looking at an adult mosquito, it's very easy to understand whether it's a male or a female. They're easy. I'll show you one picture. You'll be an expert in no time. And I realized that, when there are, when they're emerging, then they need to standing there in order to dry up. They're like, no exoskeleton coming out of the water.
00:22:14:22 - 00:22:32:15
Hanan Lepek
And they’re standing there. While they're standing there, they're immobile. But when they do that, you easily identify whether it's a male or a female. So it hit me that we need to find a way to immobilize mosquitoes, to to identify them, to use vision, to identify whether it's a male or female.
00:22:32:19 - 00:22:39:02
Abigail Acton
So what did you do next? So once they're identified, what's your process? How do you separate the males from the female?
00:22:39:04 - 00:23:11:23
Hanan Lepek
So long story short, we've built an automated factory made of three components. One is the emergence or, final rearing stages of the mosquitos. They're inside the water. And they being flow, they're they're being guided through air ducts towards the keyway sorting imaging station when they fly and being guided through the air duct, they land on a conveyor belt which is porous, and the air acts as a pull force.
00:23:12:00 - 00:23:38:19
Hanan Lepek
So the mosquitoes hence are standing on the conveyor belt. Without ability to fly away, they may be able to walk a little bit. They're not able to fly away. So imagine a factory which packages cookies, and you have a conveyor belt with millions of cookies all the time, but it arrives thousands. An imaging station, the computer identify the cookies on the conveyor belt, and something takes out the cookies and put them into boxes.
00:23:38:19 - 00:23:59:17
Lars Hviid
And then ships them to the supermarkets. So pretty much the same. So now we are able to source with emergency units, millions of mosquitoes without touching them, identify in real time in a capacity of more than 300 mosquitoes per second. I will say it again. More than 300 mosquitoes per second.
00:23:59:19 - 00:24:01:12
Abigail Acton
And that can identify the males from the females.
00:24:01:18 - 00:24:11:11
Hanan Lepek
Yeah, this is unparalleled to any, any, any capability, any capability that any human can do or any other manual process currently on Earth.
00:24:11:13 - 00:24:13:24
Abigail Acton
And then what happens to the males.
00:24:14:01 - 00:24:27:22
Hanan Lepek
So we take out the females and then the conveyor propagates and we load the males into release canisters. We then take them and irradiate them.
00:24:27:24 - 00:24:31:03
Abigail Acton
And that makes them sterile. So it's the process of irradiation that makes them sterile.
00:24:31:04 - 00:24:59:01
Hanan Lepek
Right? Right. Correct. And then we provide them to the, let's say to the distributor, the pest control company, or whatever, and they go to the field and they can release them. So we can cover very large areas from a single facility, from a single factory. And by introducing this process, then so the entire process is industrialized. At the end of the week, we change the software mode and we then load also females and we take them back to the first room.
00:24:59:06 - 00:25:05:09
Hanan Lepek
So now we have both males and females for the next week. So it's cyclic okay?
00:25:05:09 - 00:25:07:09
Abigail Acton
So you're kind of recycling the females essentially.
00:25:07:11 - 00:25:07:23
Hanan Lepek
Yes.
00:25:07:23 - 00:25:16:09
Abigail Acton
Exactly I understand that you were speaking to some people at the COP with regard to the using sterile males in Africa. Can you briefly tell me a little bit more about that?
00:25:16:15 - 00:25:43:24
Hanan Lepek
Yeah. So we presented, Israel, part of the Israeli technology delegation, the latest COP in Baku, Azerbaijan. And there it was really an amazing experience. We met people from across the world, different colours, customs, cultures. All of them interested in climate. So malaria is not only in Africa and mosquitoes you know, carry different, are responsible for different diseases, the malaria Chikungunya, dengue and others.
00:25:44:01 - 00:26:14:06
Hanan Lepek
So they we met, bunch of the different representatives from Ghana, from Uganda, from Guinea Faso, from Tanzania. They were excited and thrilled about this potential because they have all those problems with the malaria and and some of them already heard about the SIT, but they have problems of scaling up. So seeing a choice solution, leveraging harnessing the power of AI to something good and be able to scale up this, this technology, this solution is very exciting to all of them.
00:26:14:06 - 00:26:27:15
Hanan Lepek
And we are already now discussing with some of them also together with representatives from the UN, where they are now helping us. So I really see, really exciting potential to roll this technology in Africa.
00:26:27:17 - 00:26:46:08
Abigail Acton
Very good. Excellent. Thank you so much, Hanan for the explanation. That was really, really interesting. Well this is just wonderful. Thanks very, very much for your time explaining your work which is very interesting. And I'm very glad that we've tackled the subject from various angles. I think that's gives us a good overview. So thanks for your time and for joining me today on CORDIScovery.
00:26:46:10 - 00:26:47:14
Hanan Lepek
Thank you very much.
00:26:47:16 - 00:26:49:03
Lars Hviid
Thank you very much for having me.
00:26:49:05 - 00:26:56:11
Abigail Acton
Thank you. You're very welcome everybody. Carry on with the good work. That's all I can say. Okay. Good bye.
00:26:57:14 - 00:27:19:08
Abigail Acton
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00:27:19:10 - 00:27:40:24
Abigail Acton
Listen to the episode on Hidden Interactions to find out why. In our last 42 episodes, there'll be something there to tweak your curiosity. Perhaps you want to know what other EU funded projects are doing to reduce the number of deaths from malaria? The Cordis website will give you an insight into the results of projects funded by Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe that are working in this area.
00:27:41:01 - 00:28:02:10
Abigail Acton
The website has articles and interviews that explore the results of research being conducted in a very broad range of domains and subjects, from neutrons to neurons. There is something there for you. Maybe you're involved in a project or would like to apply for funding. Take a look at what others are doing in your domain. So come and check out the research that's revealing what makes our world tick.
00:28:02:12 - 00:28:15:11
Abigail Acton
We're always happy to hear from you. Drop us a line editorial@cordis.europa.eu. Until next time.
This is an AI transcription.
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:39:14
Abigail Acton
This is CORDISdiscovery. Hello and welcome to this episode of CORDIScovery with me, Abigail Acton. Today we're talking about malaria from controlling mosquitoes, carrying the parasite through the way malaria behaves in the body. The range of challenges facing researchers is very diverse. The UN's third sustainable development goal is to by 2030 end the epidemics of Aids, tuberculosis and malaria.
00:00:39:16 - 00:01:06:21
Abigail Acton
The EU is helping to achieve this ambitious goal by funding research into the disease to get a better understanding of how the parasite evolves in the body. Working out why vaccines for some types of malaria remain ineffective, and how to reduce the number of infected mosquitoes in the first place. Controlling the number of infected mosquitoes, known as vectors, is still largely based on insecticide spraying, indoor spraying, and mosquito nets infused with insecticides do have a positive impact.
00:01:06:23 - 00:01:36:23
Abigail Acton
But the World Health Organization warns that fragile gains may be lost due to insecticide resistance amongst Anopheles mosquitoes. They call for innovation to develop new tools, technologies and approaches for vector control. Along with the difficulty of vector control, once someone is infected, the parasite Plasmodium falciparum behaves unusually within the body. It has multiple life cycle stages, and a feature of one stage may change in another.
00:01:37:00 - 00:02:02:00
Abigail Acton
When it comes to trying to develop a vaccine, the situation is also complex. Placental malaria infected close to 13 million African women in 2022. The basic problem of placental malaria is that the molecule that the parasites used to bind in the placenta is highly variable. So an antibody recognizing one variant often doesn't bind to others, making vaccines frustratingly difficult to develop.
00:02:02:02 - 00:02:29:03
Abigail Acton
Working in each of these fields with support from the EU research funding. Today's guests are here to tell us what their work is doing to shine a light on these and other issues. Catherine Merrick is professor of parasitology in the pathology department at Cambridge University. She studies the human malaria parasite aiming to improve our understanding of the fundamental biology of the parasite and the impact of this biology on virulence.
00:02:29:04 - 00:02:30:00
Abigail Acton
Welcome, Catherine.
00:02:30:00 - 00:02:32:05
Catherine Merrick
Hello. It’s lovely to be here.
00:02:32:05 - 00:02:50:11
Abigail Acton
Lovely to have you. Lars Hviid is professor in the Department of Immunology and Microbiology at the University of Copenhagen. He's particularly interested in improving our understanding of how people gradually acquire protection from malaria, thereby helping the development of vaccines against this deadly disease. Hello, Lars.
00:02:50:13 - 00:02:52:15
Lars Hviid
Hello. Fantastic to be here. Thank you.
00:02:52:19 - 00:03:08:09
Abigail Acton
You're welcome. Hanan Lepek is the founder and CEO of Senecio Robotics. He works at the interface of biology and mechanical and software engineering to create and deploy sterile mosquitoes on a large scale to reduce local mosquito populations. Hello, Hanan.
00:03:08:11 - 00:03:09:24
Hanan Lepek
Hi. Great being here. Thank you.
00:03:10:05 - 00:03:36:15
Abigail Acton
Welcome. Catherine, I'm going to turn to you first. The PlasmoCycle Project set out to transform our understanding of the basic biology of the malaria parasite Plasmodium, and how that biology affects virulence. So can you tell us what is unusual about the malaria plasmodium parasite? Please, Catherine.
00:03:36:17 - 00:03:59:22
Catherine Merrick
The malaria parasites really are unusual. They are single celled organisms, and their closest ancestors are actually tiny cells, a bit like algae that live in coral reefs.. So they're really very different from our own human cells. And one of the ways in which they are different is that their cell cycle, the way they make new cells, is fundamentally unusual. Most of the cells that we've studied for decades, like yeasts and human cancer cells, have basically similar biology. They divide by what we call binary fission.
00:03:59:22 - 00:04:33:04
Catherine Merrick
So they copy their genome, split it into two halves to get two genomes, and then they split the whole cell in half to get two daughter cells. We really know a lot about those stages, the order they are happening, the proteins that control them. But malaria parasites just don't do this. They make multiple daughter cells 20 or more inside the same mother cell before dividing up and bursting out all together. So most of what we know about the ordering and the control of those basic processes just can’t be mapped onto these parasites.
00:04:33:06 - 00:04:51:06
Abigail Acton
And what did your project establish and how did you go about establishing that? Tell us a little bit more about the work, the project.
00:04:51:08 - 00:05:26:09
Catherine Merrick
So the first thing to say is that, we, took out this project because I had developed some new technology that would help us to study the malaria parasites cell cycle. And the first innovation there was adding a gene to the parasites called thymidine kinase. This allowed us to label new DNA being made in the parasite as the genome got copied. Now, in itself, that wasn't novel. People had been doing experiments like that in human cells for years, but they just didn't work in malaria parasites. So the eureka moment here was figuring out that they didn't work simply because this one gene, thymidine kinase was missing, and that adding it back would allow us to do all these experiments looking at how and when the genome got copied.
00:05:26:11 - 00:05:45:14
Catherine Merrick
Not in binary fashion, like in human cells, but in this complex, syncytial cell division process in malaria parasites.
00:05:45:16 - 00:06:05:09
Abigail Acton
So it’s almost I mean, if I could say this, correct me if I’m wrong, but it’s a little bit like, analogous to the notion of a dye where you can actually visualize something that’s going on. And previously you couldn’t. I mean, often, you know, like if you think about dyes being used to follow mechanisms, biological mechanisms, in this case, it was a gene that you were using to amplify and show you what was going on. Is that is that more or less correct?
00:06:05:11 - 00:06:30:22
Catherine Merrick
That’s right. So that we were exactly using a dye basically. But because the parasites didn’t have this gene, they ignored the dye. And if we put the gene in now, they can see the dye and we can label them with it. So we use that just labeling the new DNA that was made on whole populations of parasites, on single parasite cells, and even on single DNA molecules in those cells to follow the basic parameters of the cell cycle. So, for example, we asked things like how long does it take to do each new genome?
00:06:30:24 - 00:06:50:03
Catherine Merrick
How many can be replicating in a parasite at once? Because remember, a human cell is only ever doing one at a time, but a parasite can be doing a dozen at once. We even asked, how fast is a single DNA molecule get replicated? And they sound like basic questions, but they allowed us to make meaningful comparisons with future questions.
00:06:50:08 - 00:07:18:16
Catherine Merrick
Like, if we treat the parasites with an anti-malarial drug, do they stop making new genomes? Or if we starve them of nutrients, do they slow down? And those questions matter because they can matter for real malarial disease. Human patients can get very low on sugar, for example, and that might mess with the cell division in the parasites. Or they can take an anti-malarial drug. And we know that some of those drugs can damage DNA. So does the copying of the DNA get messed up as a result?
00:07:18:18 - 00:07:32:22
Abigail Acton
I think this is wonderful, but it's absolutely the mechanics. And of course you have to establish those if you're going to work out solutions. So yes, indeed. And talking about solutions, how do you feel that your work is actually going to feed into future research going forward?
00:07:32:24 - 00:08:00:01
Catherine Merrick
Well, we are a long way of generating, new interventions for malaria with this work. But the more we understand about how these parasites do cell division, the smarter we can be about designing new innovations in interventions. So, for example, to make a bad cell die, which is what we're trying to do in chemotherapy for cancer, for example, with antiviral drugs, we often try to hit what are called cell cycle checkpoints.
00:08:00:07 - 00:08:23:06
Catherine Merrick
The way that the cell cycle is controlled. And if we can come up with combinations of antimalarial drugs, which both damage the parasite's DNA and simultaneously knacker their checkpoints, that could be a more effective therapy to make the bad malaria parasites die. And that obviously could be really impactful.
00:08:23:08 - 00:08:30:16
Abigail Acton
Yeah, that sounds fantastic. Absolutely super. And really well explained. Thank you so much. That was very, very clear for everyone. Thank you. Does anyone have any comments or observations to make about Catherine's work? Yes, Lars.
00:08:30:18 - 00:08:54:09
Lars Hviid
Yeah. Well, I have one question. I mean, as I understand it, Catherine is now discussing how the asexual parasites divide inside the red blood cells. But before that stage, there is the liver stage, where one parasite actually divides, not into 20 something daughter parasites, but tens of thousands of daughter parasites. Does a similar process apply in that stage?
00:08:54:09 - 00:08:55:10
Lars Hviid
Do you know that?
00:08:55:12 - 00:09:16:09
Catherine Merrick
It does, absolutely. And actually, some of my colleagues in Portugal are studying exactly that, and they're using the same technology that we developed, adding this thymidine kinase gene into the parasites. In a mouse malaria model where you can look at that liver stage. So we can't look at a human liver very easily, but we can look at a mouse liver.
00:09:16:11 - 00:09:37:18
Catherine Merrick
And indeed, in those liver stages, thousands of new parasites are made, within a single mother cell, first asynchronously. And then really interestingly, at the end, they seem to do a massive synchronous cell division. And there are then tens of thousands of daughter parasites.
00:09:37:20 - 00:09:57:11
Abigail Acton
Oh, fascinating. Like a great big sort of burst of them. Oh, horrible. Right. Well, I'm so glad you guys are doing this research. Lars, I'm going to turn to you now. You coordinated the PAMSEQ project, and the work you and your team have done is bringing a vaccine for placental malaria, potentially closer. Now, I know you're hoping to build on the work you've done so far because you feel a vaccine might be within reach.
00:09:57:13 - 00:10:01:16
Abigail Acton
Can you tell us a little bit about what drew you into this area of research, Lars?
00:10:01:18 - 00:10:30:10
Lars Hviid
Well, malaria and pregnant women, what we call placental malaria is fascinating. I mean, because it constitutes a really remarkable exception to the general rule that malaria is a childhood disease in Africa where it occurs. So adults are generally protected because they have developed immunity to the disease. The childhood malaria vaccines that are now being rolled out in Africa aims to accelerate that process.
00:10:30:12 - 00:11:12:09
Lars Hviid
But despite this immunity, women once again become highly susceptible to malaria when they become pregnant without getting too technical, this is because the placenta creates a new opportunity for the parasites, where they can hide and thrive. They selectively multiply there and cause inflammation, which causes placental malaria and delivery of pre-term and very small babies. Remarkably, this problem goes away over successive pregnancies, which clearly suggests that there is some kind of acquisition of immunity and that this acquisition that occurs in childhood is somehow reset by pregnancy and then replayed.
00:11:12:14 - 00:11:13:20
Lars Hviid
And I find that fascinating.
00:11:14:00 - 00:11:33:13
Abigail Acton
That is fascinating. That seems very strange. Inconsistency. There must be a reason for it. Fascinating. So can you tell me a little bit more about what you think the reason might be? And in fact, actually, could you could you tell us a little bit more about the, the parasite molecule and what makes that, difficult to deal with via vaccination?
00:11:33:15 - 00:11:59:17
Lars Hviid
Absolutely. I mean, only about 20 years ago, it became clear, actually, that the malaria parasite, and I'm talking like about falciparum that we're discussing here, that that parasite uses a special molecule to hide in the placenta. And once the immune system sees that molecule, it starts making an immune response to it. It produces antibodies that can prevent the parasites from sticking in the placenta.
00:11:59:19 - 00:12:28:08
Lars Hviid
So the next time the woman gets pregnant, those antibodies are there for her. And the problem of placental malaria is no longer her problem. The molecule that the parasites utilize, we call it VAR2CSA is of no use to parasites, if there is no placenta to hide in. Women, therefore, do not start to make antibodies to this molecule until VAR2CSA positive parasites appear during pregnancy.
00:12:28:10 - 00:12:40:15
Lars Hviid
And once the woman has acquired these antibodies, she is protected. So placental malaria is therefore mainly a problem during the first few pregnancies because afterwards she has acquired immunity.
00:12:40:17 - 00:12:47:11
Abigail Acton
And if we know what the antibody is, how come we can't harness the power of a vaccine to boost immunity in the first place?
00:12:47:14 - 00:13:11:09
Lars Hviid
The discovery of the VAR2CSA molecules spawned the idea that it should be possible to make a vaccine specifically to give to young women prior to their first pregnancy, and then the aim to protect them against placental malaria. VAR2CSA vaccines have been tried, and they should work, but they haven't really given very encouraging results. VAR2CSA is a tricky molecule.
00:13:11:11 - 00:13:36:12
Lars Hviid
I mean, even though every parasite has at least one, they are not completely identical between different parasites. But to be useful in a vaccine, the vaccine needs to target the exact parts of such a molecule that is conserved among all the variants. And this was not achieved in the vaccines that have been tested. And therefore they could only protect against those variants that were used in the vaccine.
00:13:36:15 - 00:13:49:18
Abigail Acton
So it's a question of looking for a common denominator. Yes. It could be targeted by a vaccine. Exactly okay I see. So what did the project set out to do and how? Tell us a little bit about the technology that you were using, because I do understand that drove really back the frontiers.
00:13:49:20 - 00:14:18:24
Lars Hviid
Yes. I mean, we were struck actually when with this, result of the vaccination, which disappointed us as much as anybody really. Was that, in contrast to this marked variant specificity, the antibodies that women acquire in response to placental malaria, they seem to be quite cross-reactive. And it is actually this discrepancy between the variant specificity after vaccination and the apparent cross-reactivity after exposure.
00:14:19:05 - 00:14:20:08
Abigail Acton
Cross-reactivity?
00:14:20:10 - 00:14:27:14
Lars Hviid
Cross-Reactivity meaning that the antibody can recognize many different variants of this VAR2CSA molecule okay.
00:14:27:15 - 00:14:28:15
Abigail Acton
But after exposure.
00:14:28:15 - 00:14:55:23
Lars Hviid
So we wanted to set out to find out why that was, the evidence that is cross-reactive after natural exposure was quite flimsy, actually. We only had a handful of antibodies that we could use to show that, but, those were antibodies that we discovered some 20 years ago. But, Pilar Quintana, who is a very smart scientist working with me, she proposed that we should use a new technology that was called LIBRA-seq.
00:14:56:00 - 00:15:11:16
Lars Hviid
To dramatically crank up the number of antibodies that we could study. So what Pilar did was that she went to the lab in the US that had developed this technology, and she applied it, but using different variants of our VAR2CSA molecule.
00:15:11:19 - 00:15:13:12
Abigail Acton
Right. And what did you find?
00:15:13:14 - 00:15:40:16
Lars Hviid
Well, she managed, during her period over there to identify about a thousand new antibodies. I mean, which was quite a leap from the initial handful that we had. And even better, those antibodies were most of them were quite cross-reactive. So the tentative conclusion that we made many years ago, that was based on a handful of antibodies since we hold true now that we have tested it with many, many more.
00:15:40:19 - 00:15:59:04
Abigail Acton
Oh that's wonderful. That's really, really excellent. And Lars, I know that the work you've been doing is, is really fundamental and as you say, really broadening our ability to, to analyze very many more of these antibodies. What are you hoping to be able to achieve in your next stage of research if you get the funding?
00:15:59:06 - 00:16:23:08
Lars Hviid
Yeah. Well, we need to find out exactly why it is that those antibodies that are naturally acquired are cross-reactive, whereas the vaccine induced antibodies are not. We actually think we know why that is, but we of course need to be sure. So if you consider the VAR2CSA molecule as, piece of string or piece of rope, when you do a vaccine, you in practice, you take a short piece of that string and you immunize with that.
00:16:23:13 - 00:16:45:01
Lars Hviid
So the antibodies you generate can only recognize something on that little piece. But in reality, this molecule is not a straight piece of string. It is folded up like a knot. So what we think is that the important things recognized by antibodies are composed of little bits on the string, that when the string is straight, they are far apart from each other.
00:16:45:05 - 00:17:05:07
Lars Hviid
But as you knotted up, then they will come close together. So when you use a vaccine, you break these things that are recognized by the important antibodies and therefore the vaccine is not cross-reactive. We are now testing this. I mean, if it's correct, we then need to find out how can we make the molecule look more not like.
00:17:05:07 - 00:17:11:17
Lars Hviid
But we hope that this work will somehow, make the problem of malaria and placental malaria go away.
00:17:11:19 - 00:17:28:14
Abigail Acton
Because that would be just obviously amazingly important. And the work you're doing is so groundbreaking. So I really hope that, that you can build on it and continue to build on it because I think it's clearly, you know, forging a way towards a vaccine to this horrible condition. So thank you very much, Lars.
00:17:28:19 - 00:17:32:12
Abigail Acton
Do we have any questions for Lars? Hanan? Yes. I think you have.
00:17:32:14 - 00:17:35:10
Hanan Lepek
A very naive question, if I may.
00:17:35:10 - 00:17:38:18
Abigail Acton
I love those, I love those are excellent. It means that I don't have to ask them.
00:17:38:19 - 00:17:41:10
Lars Hviid
I fear those.
00:17:41:12 - 00:18:05:02
Hanan Lepek
So it's amazing that you said that, subsequent pregnancies of women, they have lower chances of contracting malaria. Right? Isn't it a chance, somehow to maybe trick the parasite and let them think that, like, she will take a pill or something that her body is now pregnant when it's not, and then by that, lowering the chance it will contract the malaria.
00:18:05:04 - 00:18:27:13
Lars Hviid
Well, that's a good question. I think actually the parasites. You don't need to try to trick the parasites, because I think that the parasites are always trying to figure out whether their host is pregnant. So they are continuously trying to express this VAR2CSA molecule. But if they happen to be in a non-pregnant individual, it could be a non-pregnant woman, it could be a child, it could be a man.
00:18:27:14 - 00:18:37:03
Lars Hviid
Those parasites will die and therefore you don't make an immune response to it. So people like you and me will never make antibodies to that, even if we get malaria.
00:18:37:05 - 00:18:57:00
Abigail Acton
Yup. Okay, super. Thanks very much, Lars. And I really hope that your work, can continue. It's a very, very significant work. Hanan, I'm going to turn to you. We've been looking at the biology. We've been looking at the notion of identifying and perhaps finding a solution. But if we go right back down to basics, what we really need to do is control the number of mosquitoes.
00:18:57:02 - 00:19:19:07
Abigail Acton
So the RoboSIT project has used AI and other tools to successfully breed, which isn't easy and disperse - also not easy - sterile male mosquitoes as a way to control vector populations. So can you tell us a little bit more about the current ways, Hanan now, prior to your innovation, what are the ways that are currently used to control numbers of mosquitoes, please?
00:19:19:09 - 00:19:42:05
Hanan Lepek
Sure. So typically, specifically also in Africa, there was, a huge campaign in providing bed nets which do the great effective work, you know, pesticides. So that's great for that used to be great for adults. So thing is that once the fogging, typically was the fogging is it was not in the evaporates.
00:19:42:07 - 00:20:05:01
Hanan Lepek
Then you're still left with all the eggs and the larvae and the pupa, which are still currently developing. Other than the fact that it's very light, it's typically unhealthy. And also on top of that, the pesticide, new to develop the resistance to pesticides and creating new materials is a very, tedious and long regulatory process.
00:20:05:03 - 00:20:27:11
Hanan Lepek
And so the success of the sterile fruit flies program. So, for example, in Guatemala, where one of the largest SIT - sterile insect technique - facilities the world, resides, they produce about a billion of sterile fruit flies, every week or so. I believe this is like the gold standard for mosquito control, specifically for the Anopheles, for the malaria.
00:20:27:13 - 00:20:51:20
Lars Hviid
Mosquito. There are huge challenges in the ability to separate the females from the males. It's typically much, much easier at the adult stage. So we want to separate the males from the females. And we can do that often in the adult stage. The mosquitoes are very fragile. And we want to, rear medians of them and then release them into nature streets wherever.
00:20:51:22 - 00:20:57:24
Abigail Acton
Right. Okay. So that's the target. That's the ideal. What is RoboSIT doing?
00:20:58:01 - 00:21:23:11
Hanan Lepek
We took this concept and identified why it was not used so far on global scale. You need a lot of working hands. You need a lot of people in order to rear the mosquitoes. You want to release males only because, the females bite. And then there's the males, being released. They target the females, they mate.
00:21:23:13 - 00:21:49:12
Hanan Lepek
There is no baby mosquito. And as the female mosquito typically mates only once in a lifetime one when releasing, once a week, then the population drops within x number of weeks or months, depending on the infestation level. So you need a lot of people, and you need to be repetitive. So what we did is we are harnessing AI and automation.
00:21:49:14 - 00:22:14:20
Hanan Lepek
When you're looking at an adult mosquito, it's very easy to understand whether it's a male or a female. They're easy. I'll show you one picture. You'll be an expert in no time. And I realized that, when there are, when they're emerging, then they need to standing there in order to dry up. They're like, no exoskeleton coming out of the water.
00:22:14:22 - 00:22:32:15
Hanan Lepek
And they’re standing there. While they're standing there, they're immobile. But when they do that, you easily identify whether it's a male or a female. So it hit me that we need to find a way to immobilize mosquitoes, to to identify them, to use vision, to identify whether it's a male or female.
00:22:32:19 - 00:22:39:02
Abigail Acton
So what did you do next? So once they're identified, what's your process? How do you separate the males from the female?
00:22:39:04 - 00:23:11:23
Hanan Lepek
So long story short, we've built an automated factory made of three components. One is the emergence or, final rearing stages of the mosquitos. They're inside the water. And they being flow, they're they're being guided through air ducts towards the keyway sorting imaging station when they fly and being guided through the air duct, they land on a conveyor belt which is porous, and the air acts as a pull force.
00:23:12:00 - 00:23:38:19
Hanan Lepek
So the mosquitoes hence are standing on the conveyor belt. Without ability to fly away, they may be able to walk a little bit. They're not able to fly away. So imagine a factory which packages cookies, and you have a conveyor belt with millions of cookies all the time, but it arrives thousands. An imaging station, the computer identify the cookies on the conveyor belt, and something takes out the cookies and put them into boxes.
00:23:38:19 - 00:23:59:17
Lars Hviid
And then ships them to the supermarkets. So pretty much the same. So now we are able to source with emergency units, millions of mosquitoes without touching them, identify in real time in a capacity of more than 300 mosquitoes per second. I will say it again. More than 300 mosquitoes per second.
00:23:59:19 - 00:24:01:12
Abigail Acton
And that can identify the males from the females.
00:24:01:18 - 00:24:11:11
Hanan Lepek
Yeah, this is unparalleled to any, any, any capability, any capability that any human can do or any other manual process currently on Earth.
00:24:11:13 - 00:24:13:24
Abigail Acton
And then what happens to the males.
00:24:14:01 - 00:24:27:22
Hanan Lepek
So we take out the females and then the conveyor propagates and we load the males into release canisters. We then take them and irradiate them.
00:24:27:24 - 00:24:31:03
Abigail Acton
And that makes them sterile. So it's the process of irradiation that makes them sterile.
00:24:31:04 - 00:24:59:01
Hanan Lepek
Right? Right. Correct. And then we provide them to the, let's say to the distributor, the pest control company, or whatever, and they go to the field and they can release them. So we can cover very large areas from a single facility, from a single factory. And by introducing this process, then so the entire process is industrialized. At the end of the week, we change the software mode and we then load also females and we take them back to the first room.
00:24:59:06 - 00:25:05:09
Hanan Lepek
So now we have both males and females for the next week. So it's cyclic okay?
00:25:05:09 - 00:25:07:09
Abigail Acton
So you're kind of recycling the females essentially.
00:25:07:11 - 00:25:07:23
Hanan Lepek
Yes.
00:25:07:23 - 00:25:16:09
Abigail Acton
Exactly I understand that you were speaking to some people at the COP with regard to the using sterile males in Africa. Can you briefly tell me a little bit more about that?
00:25:16:15 - 00:25:43:24
Hanan Lepek
Yeah. So we presented, Israel, part of the Israeli technology delegation, the latest COP in Baku, Azerbaijan. And there it was really an amazing experience. We met people from across the world, different colours, customs, cultures. All of them interested in climate. So malaria is not only in Africa and mosquitoes you know, carry different, are responsible for different diseases, the malaria Chikungunya, dengue and others.
00:25:44:01 - 00:26:14:06
Hanan Lepek
So they we met, bunch of the different representatives from Ghana, from Uganda, from Guinea Faso, from Tanzania. They were excited and thrilled about this potential because they have all those problems with the malaria and and some of them already heard about the SIT, but they have problems of scaling up. So seeing a choice solution, leveraging harnessing the power of AI to something good and be able to scale up this, this technology, this solution is very exciting to all of them.
00:26:14:06 - 00:26:27:15
Hanan Lepek
And we are already now discussing with some of them also together with representatives from the UN, where they are now helping us. So I really see, really exciting potential to roll this technology in Africa.
00:26:27:17 - 00:26:46:08
Abigail Acton
Very good. Excellent. Thank you so much, Hanan for the explanation. That was really, really interesting. Well this is just wonderful. Thanks very, very much for your time explaining your work which is very interesting. And I'm very glad that we've tackled the subject from various angles. I think that's gives us a good overview. So thanks for your time and for joining me today on CORDIScovery.
00:26:46:10 - 00:26:47:14
Hanan Lepek
Thank you very much.
00:26:47:16 - 00:26:49:03
Lars Hviid
Thank you very much for having me.
00:26:49:05 - 00:26:56:11
Abigail Acton
Thank you. You're very welcome everybody. Carry on with the good work. That's all I can say. Okay. Good bye.
00:26:57:14 - 00:27:19:08
Abigail Acton
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00:27:19:10 - 00:27:40:24
Abigail Acton
Listen to the episode on Hidden Interactions to find out why. In our last 42 episodes, there'll be something there to tweak your curiosity. Perhaps you want to know what other EU funded projects are doing to reduce the number of deaths from malaria? The Cordis website will give you an insight into the results of projects funded by Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe that are working in this area.
00:27:41:01 - 00:28:02:10
Abigail Acton
The website has articles and interviews that explore the results of research being conducted in a very broad range of domains and subjects, from neutrons to neurons. There is something there for you. Maybe you're involved in a project or would like to apply for funding. Take a look at what others are doing in your domain. So come and check out the research that's revealing what makes our world tick.
00:28:02:12 - 00:28:15:11
Abigail Acton
We're always happy to hear from you. Drop us a line editorial@cordis.europa.eu. Until next time.
Fighting malaria on several fronts
Why is it so hard to find a vaccine that works well against placental malaria? Ever thought about the challenges of irradiating 300 mosquitoes a second! And how do the dynamics of replication play out in our bodies? The UN’s third Sustainable Development Goal is to, by 2030, end the epidemics of AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. The EU is helping to achieve this ambitious goal by funding research into the disease. From working out why vaccines for placental malaria remain ineffective and how the parasite evolves during infection, to how the number of infected mosquitoes can be reduced in the first place – our guests today are working to push back against malaria. Catherine Merrick(opens in new window) is professor of Parasitology in the Pathology Department(opens in new window) at Cambridge University. She studies the human malaria parasite, aiming to improve our understanding of the fundamental biology of the parasite, and the impact of this biology on virulence, subjects she explored in the PlasmoCycle project. Lars Hviid(opens in new window) is professor in the Department of Immunology and Microbiology, at the University of Copenhagen(opens in new window). His PAMSEQ project improved our understanding of how people gradually acquire protection from malaria, thereby helping the development of vaccines against this deadly parasite. Hanan Lepek(opens in new window) is the founder and CEO of Senecio Robotics(opens in new window). He works at the interface of biology, and mechanical and software engineering, to create and deploy sterile mosquitoes on a large scale to reduce local mosquito populations. He coordinated the RoboSIT project.
Happy to hear from you!
If you have any feedback, we’re always happy to hear from you! Send us any comments, questions or suggestions to: editorial@cordis.europa.eu.